The National Quality Council (NQC) in collaboration with the British Standards Institute (BSI) recently organised a Train the Trainers workshop for stakeholders on critical data gathering for the effective implementation of the Nigeria National Quality Policy (NNQP).

Chairman/Chief Executive of NQC, Osita Aboloma, said the workshop was one of many capacity development programmes under the Standards Partnership Programme (SPP) being implemented in collaboration with the BSI. 

According to him, the workshop was partly designed to empower Nigerian stakeholders to take due ownership of the NNQP in order to gather critical and accurate data for its implementation strategy.

The NQC boss, who was represented by his Chief of Staff, Bola Fashina, disclosed that the SPP was facilitated by the Foreign, Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) of the British Government in Nigeria under its Centre of Expertise projects to support the effective implementation of NNQP and enhance seamless trading between the United Kingdom and Nigeria.

He also emphasized the need for Nigerian stakeholders in the public and private sectors to take optimum advantage of the nation’s head start within the African continent, in the drafting and approval of a national quality policy as well as the establishment of a government organ for its implementation.

These, he said, would accelerate the rapid development of Nigeria’s quality infrastructure consisting of Standards, Accreditation, Metrology and Conformity Assessment and enhance the competitiveness of Made-in-Nigeria products in view of the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) agreement and the increasing emphasis on quality in global trade.

Lead facilitator of the workshop, Mike Peet, stated that it was designed to assist Nigerian stakeholders update available data in order to identify gaps within the national quality infrastructure and provide necessary support in the implementation plans to close them, through a pilot project to be administered on a larger scale.

Participants in the workshop were drawn from both the public and private sectors.

including the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment as well as Agriculture and Food Security; Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON): National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC); Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC); Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) and the National Action Committee on the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (NAC-AfCFTA).

Others include Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN); National Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA); National Association of Small-Scale Industrialists (NASSI); National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (NASME); and Nigerian Employers Consultative Association (NECA).